Day three: It's the third day of the festival and I can't believe I haven't actually been here for three years. It's exhilarating to be here, but it is also exhausting, intense and overwhelming. Everything is exaggerated at Festival au Desert: it's unbearably hot during the day and freezing cold at night; there is music everywhere, all the time, ranging from griot singing, to Tuareg morning rituals, to sound checks crashing across the dunes - plus, camels emit the most terrifying kind moan and they do it pretty regularly.

None of it is easy to get used to, even if it does feel like a lifetime since we first got the desert's sand (and the odd bloody crumb crumb) between our toes.

While the conditions have worn us down, we've taken solace from trying to tune into as many artists as we can amid the cacophony. Yesterday we recorded sessions with musicians Bassekou Kouyate (MP3), Khaira Arby (MP3) and Vieux Farka Touré (MP3). All sat cross-legged on the sand and jammed while crowds quietly gathered around.

One characteristic of all the sessions was the exchanging of low groans between artist and audience. The musicians would start it, groaning "Um!" as they danced, their hands circling gracefully, and the crowd would respond in like fashion. Our translator Dicko explains the musicians' behaviour is an evocation of the soul and that it is "impossible to resist doing the same". While Dicko says a lot of things that are hard to believe, this one remark at least sounded plausible.